Reviews

Jan 18, 2025
Mixed Feelings
Ghost in the Shell is one of those superclassics that was clearly brilliant for its time, but doesn't really live up to modern expectations. It might be a worthwhile watch for people who are interested in the evolution of anime or film, but I found little in terms of subjective enjoyment here. I was bored enough while watching it that my mind frequently drifted towards other things, and I was somewhat relieved when it was over.

I watched the dub, and there was a very annoying sound difference between characters speaking and the special effects that meant I either couldn't hear what the characters were saying, or I'd be deafened whenever something like gunfire happened. I eventually settled on the dub with subtitles from the sub. The differences between the subtitles and the words being spoken was enough to be a nuisance, but at least I could understand what was being said without randomly going deaf.

The film is too short to do all the things it wants. It's only 78 minutes before the credits roll, and it devotes many scenes to long, ponderous views of the cityscape or futuristic tech. If those are subtracted, then that leaves scarcely over an hour to cram several action scenes, a political thriller, and a bunch of existentialist philosophy into.

The action scenes were what I enjoyed the most, although I'm grading on a pretty generous curve here. If you've read any of my other reviews then you'd know I typically don't find the action scenes in anime to be all that engaging, but this film had enough spectacle to at least be somewhat interesting. Some of the "futuristic" special effects look goofily dated, like how people in the 90s expressed "computers" by spamming green numbers on the screen. Otherwise, the effects in the fights were pretty decent. Old Western special effects can often have an uncanny valley problem, but that's less of an issue in anime.

The political thriller is mostly just used as a setting, which is fine. I enjoy political thrillers so I was a bit disappointed that the film didn't go more into that area, but it's OK to just use a thin vertical slice of political machinations as the backdrop for a story. There's a lot of people and departments thrown out that I had some trouble keeping them straight, but it ultimately didn't matter.

The film Waxes a bit excessively philosophical about the difference between a body ("shell") and a person's sense of self or "soul" ("ghost"). The concept of a soul, while powerfully evocative to almost every ancient human society, is known not to exist by modern science. At best, it's just a useful shorthand for how people perceive themselves. Fanciful notions of the self existing beyond the physical confines of a human brain are childish nonsense. It naturally follows that a robot could be just as much as a "real person" as any normal human, assuming the tech was sufficiently advanced. As such, I found most of the philosophical subtext of the film to be akin to a nuanced discussion of whether Santa exists. The answer is already obvious, and any attempts to claim it's non-obvious seem like a tryhard liberal arts undergraduate attempting to be galaxy-brained.

My score of 4/10 reflects my relatively negative subjective enjoyment while watching Ghost in the Shell, while the "mixed feelings" indicates that I can appreciate the film as a historical artifact. I believe the movies it inspired (e.g. the Matrix) did a much better job of capturing its techno-dystopian vision while also being more entertaining to watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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